Shards of A Crystal
by S.R Devaste
Summary: A collection of very short oneshots. These are the scraps of stories, the shards of dreams not broken but just a little bent. All the things that could have been.
1. A Good Reason: Humor Romance

Author Notes: A collection of very short one-shots. And when I mean short, I mean very short.

"You plan to take down the goblin king?"

"Of course, it's the only logical next step."

"What if this king of yours has some objections?"

"I don't think he will."

"Why is that?"

Sarah Williams, former editor of Mystique, currently queen of said Goblins stood hands on hips lips pressed to the Goblin King's own, her hand barely grazing the edge of his hips. "Well I refuse to have sex standing up and mgwhf---" her words were cut short by the furious ministration of a hybrid of tongue and teeth.

"Good reason."


	2. Snow White: Angst

Authors Note: I apologize for the fact that this probably makes no sense.

The spires of the castle twisted into the sky and froze somewhere between the clouds and the edges of the stars. They were not metaphorically frozen, stopped, but really frozen, dotted with ice and tipped with snow. White encompassed the Labyrinth even though it wasn't bitingly cold. No because somewhere in the center of things something was melting and everything in the Labyrinth was about to follow suit.

Two figures huddled close, one tall and blonde, he or rather it, there was something decidedly inhuman about him even from miles away, sheltered the short brunette that was pressed to him like a husk of a flower, ready to fall to dust at the touch of anything new.

"Oh Sarah," he whispered to the top of her head.

Groaning, she allowed her fingers to loose himself in the waves of his velvet jacket stopping only when they reached the cold steel of his midnight armor. "I love you."

"Ah," the cousin of a smile but the daughter of a frown waltzed across his face quick as a bolt of lightning. "And there is the rub Sarah, the rub of this all."

"Just," she took in a breath, surprised that the air wasn't as cold as it was a second ago. "not enough I guess."

"Unfortunately, if I know you're lying it won't really have the same affect now will it." His left hand once gloved and cold were now free, and loose in her hair tangling themselves in it quickly, selfishly trying to milk the moment for all it was and many things that it wasn't.

"You didn't have to do this." Anger at the edges of her eyes crinkled them like a discarded love letter crumpled and thrown away.

"Yes I do."

"If you loved me-"

"Do you think I enjoy this?" His left hand withdrew the dagger from her stomach a pale crimson sickness dripping from the dagger. "Watching you die by my hand."

She couldn't believe she was using her last words on an argument with him. "In the stories--" And then her eyes slowly closed, her figure finally crumpling on the ground.

"Stories Sarah, they've done you in. You wished for a love you could not return, and killed my Labryinth."

Outside all the water, the glaciers that had frozen over the labyrinth were taking themselves in, as if they now only realized they were in an improper place. The snow was running, leaping, dancing, weeping it's way to her. Trickles and eddies of the dust so cold it burned whirled into her, she was beginning to turn white with it all.

"Unfortunately," he pressed a chaste kiss to her frozen lips, "a life for a life, a heart for a heart. Though," he paused his lips no longer dangerously close to hers, "I suppose it was a bit unfair to not tell you that mine was made of ice before hand."

Angrily, at himself or at her, he wasn't quite sure which, he drew a crystal and threw it at her. The crystal was fine, it was she who shattered flowed into the crystal like light drawn to light. And here he had prided himself on his darkness all this time.

"I give you your own fairytale now," all maliciousness was replaced with tenderness, "Snow White."


	3. Have A Heart: Smut Angst

Authors Note: Inspired by the movie Cruel Intentions I saw Jareth very very much in the character Sebastian. Watch the movie it's fantastic, though it's not for younger viewers.

She clutched him, her fingernails digging in hard. "I don't know what this is." They were in his bedroom, and her back was somewhere between touching silk and falling hard onto the hard cobblestone floor.

He has had enough of talk, enough of everything except for her lips on his body, running up lanes and marking corrections in red lipstick. "Isn't," he kisses her to remind her exactly what this is, "important."

"Is this love?" She is scholarly quizzical about it.

"I cannot love Sarah, you know that."

"But you can be loved."

"No."

"Why?" She asks, her lips beginning their familiar patterns, he groans, a deep fluttering thing like the butterfly effect hurricane.

"I have no heart." He brings his mouth to her chest then kissing once over her heart, or where he supposes a heart would be. He doesn't have one so the whole thing is a mystery to him. "An inhuman beauty has its downsides."

"Well," her hand falls down to her side and then up again, as if gravity has been reversed trailing up between his thighs and then up to his lips, "I could always give you mine."


	4. Transformations: Angst Romance

Authors Note: I love the concept of this and it works perfectly for a short write.

She poured him wine into a glass already more than half-full not noticing as it spilled over. "Our power plays have come to this already?" She smirked, a full blooded smirk that reached into her throat and her vocal cords, "You begging before me to stay once again." Her word wobbled like jello and her hands weren't sure when to stop pouring the wine. She continued pouring it even as he had taken away the glass, boredly swishing it around, decanting away the tiny bits of something that had coagulated in the middle, like cider.

"You would do well not to confuse 'I love you' with begging Sarah." He looked at the wine dribbling off the table like thinned blood and waved his hand once, sharply. It disappeared.

"Oh I know what you mean," she slurred, collapsing onto the couch, "but it's okay because I've got a thousand other men, and now that I've got you begging..." Her eyes hit the ceiling and her feet bent against the floor. "Uhh."

"Lost your train of thought, or perhaps you never had one to begin with Sarah?" Claws were out then.

"No," she waved her hand in the air and it teetered and fell. "You just told me 'I love you' I'm turning you down just like--"

"Just like what Sarah?" He prompts, entirely unwearied his eyes bright in the brandy colored firelight.

"You are one masochotastic, istic, elastic, whatever, son of a bitch you know that? You'd think you'd get tired of getting turned down, but no you're still just waiting for me to say I love you so you can shove it in my face."

The subtlest of smirks. "Of course not, and it's masochistic Sarah."

"You're teaching me magic not grammar Jaareth." Her hair swarmed around her eyes which were heavy with angry red and purple grocery bags of sleep not had. "I could have loved you know if you hadn't forced me here."

"Yes, what a terrible villain, protecting your family from your out of control magic, wherever is our white knight now?"

"No! That's not it I was going to move away. I am the selfish brat you think I am?"

"I don't love selfish brats Sarah."

"So then we're you know," she eyed him skeptically finally setting down her wine glass, "all set. You can send me home."

"Of course," he said blithely, "you can control your magic now. I have completed everything I set out to do."

Her brow slowly furrowed like a cloud moving or a tortoise's sigh, "But if you love me aren't you going to stop me, tell me not to go." She picked up her wine glass again.

"Of course not," he smiled and formed a steeple with his fingers and looked her over once, on his own accord, "you'll return on your own."

The glass shattered between her fingertips with a tiny burst of light the color of a dying star. "What?"

"Oh Sarah, did you think I brought you here only to learn magic, parlor tricks." While he spoke he carelessly wiped away all remnants of the glass which had shattered between her fingertips. "I have made you impossible to love." His eyes crinkled in disgust. "Look at you a drunken mess, warbling around my study half naked. You're pathetic, to quote a friendly face. No man, not one in a thousand would love you. You're cruel, you're bitter, and you have more magic in your little finger than any mortal on earth or Fae in the underground, in otherwords you have fully realized your potential. You are, exactly what I have always wanted you to be, perfect for me, simply by the fact that we are now almost identical."

"Save you're bullshit."

"You may leave now Sarah, but I'll be waiting for you when you return. Try not to return in anger at what I have done," the arrogance of him was suffocating, "wait until that has passed and you have accepted it completely."

"You jack-ass!"

"May we meet again Sarah, fair travels to your home and you know the words to bring you back," he waved once and she was gone. Lazily he took a long swig of brandy and went to bed.

She'd be back, or she'd be lonely the rest of her life. Just like him.


	5. The After: Angst Romance

Authors Note: In lots of fics jareth saves sarah from her deathbed asking for something of great significance in return. I don't think Sarah would accept.

She was dying. It wasn't hard to deduce this from the blood that was coagulating on the edge of where her ribs were supposed to have been. It was painful, certainly a variety of different pains like smells or tastes. She supposed if she weren't feeling it would have been rather beautiful.

Because it wasn't her life flashing through her fingertips but her nervous system. Quickly she smelled the blankness of baby powder and was struck with the iceburg of a smile. She had always wondered what had happened then, how such a genius (all babies were indeed geniuses) could remain unaware of itself. Then, slowly she could feel the crispness of dirt and the smoothness of floorboards. She had learned to walk, she remembered. this with awe, as much awe as her first sunset and then sunrise which soon came after.

"Ms. Williams, just try to stay conscious, alight," squeaked the uneasy voice of a preteen dressed in a convenience store uniform. "The medics are on their way and you just you can't die. It's just a little blood, just a little hole, you'll be alright try to stay erm, conscious. "

But his panic was small, impotent compared to the richness that was enveloping her senses. Next came her first kiss and while at the time she remembered it as more awkward fumbling than romantic love now it was an explosion in her brain of light and despair. The aching beauty of it which she had distanced herself from now seared through her brain.

Sarah knew that she was almost done with her firsts and then finally she could move onto her last, her last breath, her last smile. Rain, dog hair, dust, green and gray flashed through her vision and anger through her emotional core which seemed now, less for the purpose of creating emotion and more for feeling ones that had long since passed. She did not feel the anger that she felt now at a parking ticket or an unruly student in her class, no this anger was the all-consuming anger of someone who knew only themselves.

Thunder, the smell of burnt lightning, overdone in a sky of midnight and stars that moved like clouds.

Words then, so many of them.

And then him, slowly, just as slowly as the stars had moved that night, she cocked her hear as if to get a better angel of the scene and then her lips formed, slowly a single word. "Jareth?"

Time, stopped.

"Sarah it appears as if you're dying."

Sarah nervously felt out for the pain as the intense memory diluted itself until it was merely a shadow in her peripheral vision, but none came. "Have you stopped it?" Sticky red blood spilled over her fingers as she felt around where she knew the wound must have been, but it was hot and almost caramelized, solid.

"For the moment," he said blandly his eyes traveling over hers like an explorer over artic wastelands not meant to be charted. "I can undo this."

"Oh?" She arched an eyebrow.

"For a price."

"Name it," her voice wavered, they did not have much time.

"Your soul," and his eyes revealed all the love and hatred the world had ever known in a single blink.

"Oh Jareth," and she did not disappoint him in turn her frown and quavering lip promising oceans of tears and fields of newly blossomed regret. "Do you think that I am so afraid of what is to come as to give you something so precious. I am not afraid of the after."

He blinked again and she could have sworn his eyes were as blank as the ghosts of clouds.

"But," she paused, a feint strain of mischief in her eyes, "I should like a kiss, a going away present if you like."

"I find that suitable," and he took her head with his hands cradling it even as it was twisted at a horribly unnatural angel. Then, slowly their lips meant, stuck for a couple of seconds. There were no fireworks, no angels wept and the devil did not renounce his ways. Most importantly however, the fates did not stop sewing because they had indeed seen greater loves and had let more beautiful, perfect lovers die, succumb to death and time, or circumstance.

And Sarah Williams died, as she was meant to, and for a moment Jareth stared upon her ivory form still as a glass, or as a moment not meant to be. And slowly his gaze turned from her, onto a nothingness beyond where she went.

The thing that he was so terrified of that he assumed that mortals would give their souls to keep from going into. He sighed, impatiently and followed Sarah Williams into the after.


	6. Forgiveness: Angst Romance Hoggle!

AU:

Probably one of the only one-shots ever that features a Hoggle/Jareth/Sarah love triangle.

She held the dagger up to her throat with surprising poise. Hoggle sneered, "Just do it already Sarah, god knows he will be hear soon enough if ya don't."

Placidly she whispered, " You should be great full that I am saving the Labyrinth Hoggle and therefore your hide."

"You're the one who set out to destroy it, or him." He taunted, his face blotchy and mountainous, like a relief map. "But you couldn't even do that could ya?"

The dagger wavered, like a tear or the last leaf of autumn against her pale throat. Hoggle, seeing this, quickly changed his tactics. "I didn't mean--"

"No, you did." She sniffled, the blade swinging to her side. "But it is okay Hoggle, you are afraid."

"Yes, that's it!" He grasped at her excuses with intense relief. As long as she did it, as long as it wasn't him.

"What changed in you so much since last time, though?" she asked quizzically.

"You could have asked me any other time, now is not the time Sarah!" His eyes darted around the clearing waiting for a tearing of the air or a tinkle of glitter.

"I'd like to know the person I am going to die for." Her eyes were set in grim and her fingers wrapped in conviction.

"It's not just for me, a hundred thousand goblins, all the wished-aways, your brother among them, so don't go pretending it's about me Sarah, I'm just the leader."

Then slowly, tears. "What have I done to offend you so Hoggle, once we were friends even and now you rush me to my death?"

Something within Hoggle broke and he bent over and drew towards Sarah who was now silently weeping. "It's not that it's just ya love him Sarah, not me. He imprisoned me for years in horrible conditions and ya found it in your heart to forgive him."

"I forgave you as well," she muttered indignantly.

"It's not the same. Anyways, it's your fault," he whimpered hoarsely, bent as broken as her. Funny how he was the one who would survive the night and she would not. "The world you love is dying because of what you set in motion, Sarah. You mean it Sarah, you always mean it."

"I know," she said distantly. "In some ways this should be easier than running the Labryinth I only regret that Ja--"

"Protected grove or none missy he will still be able to hear you, guaranteed," Hoggle was still admonishing, still harsh but there was something softer about his tone. Nothing really changed, she thought with a smile.

"That he," she continued, "will be in such pain. Hoggle, if you see another girl, that you think has it in her, to love something like him to be loved. Please, promise me you will help her."

"Sarah," his eyes were dark and his skin wrinkled and pressed, but still flushed and young when he met her eyes. "I'd do anything for ya know, no matter what I say."

"I know Hoggle," she smiled and gave him a brief chaste kiss to the forehead, "I know."

Hoggle had been forgiven, atoned for his sins and now he was receiving his reward. Her lips were soft against his forehead, like the skin of a peach he thougt, smiling sadly and softly.

And without further discussion or ceremony she took the dagger up to her throat and drew a clean line across her neck, though she drew not blood. She wanted to make sure she didn't miss, that it would be quick.

"Sarah, that would not be wise." The one moment Hoggle closed his eyes Jareth had appeared, in the tempestuous corner of their make-shift meadow, hemmed in by ancient steep trees that kept their secrets well.

"Jareth," she trembled her resolve weakening considerably. "You were not supposed to know, to--"

He stepped out of the shadow of the boughs of one of the larger trees to her, and smiled a well worn smile, though it was not for this moment, but rather for one long past. "It is very lucky that you kissed Hedgemole here, some spells don't fade. Though I could hardly make him a prince when he is a Commadant of the rebellion forces, now could I?"

Her face flushed, and the dagger tried to struggle out of her hand as if a dying bird. "Magic will not avail you Jareth. I am sorry, so sorry but I simply couldn't see those innocents killed, Hoggle, Ludo," her tongue caught on the next word, "m-my brother. I love you so much Jareth."

He sighed, and suddenly, though she was certain that it wasn't possible, he was by her side, his hands in her own, kissing her. "Oh love, and I you, which is why," his hands found the dagger easily, "I cannot let this nonsense go on."

But, strangely, her grip remained firm. "No!"

His hands touched the edge of her chin tilting it to the side slightly and up so that her eyes bored, unwillingly into his own. "Sarah, love me," his lips descended on her own "fear me," and in short soft kisses he made his point quite clear, "and do as I say."

Her throat clenched and her eyes squeezed shut, her lips stammering out phrases. "I am so, so sorry, but I cannot."

Grimly, he withdrew leaving her left hand to search frantically for his own, but her right hand held the dagger tight. She drew it up to her throat once more but just as it was about to break her skin he spoke.

"They are already dead," nonchalant as a ramble his words stopped the breath of everyone in the clearing. "A hundred goblins of the wished away, your brother, there is only one left."

"NO!" Sarah screamed dropping to her knees, the dagger piercing the earth with startling finality. "Tell me you did not kill them, Jareth, tell me."

"No, it was not my doing. The Labyrinth got impatient, my wards were still strong on you, so it could not kill you, but I had no such wards on the other goblins, or your brother. I only have so much magic. Unfortunately, Hoggle, being in the glade was protected from the Labyrinth's intentions, a fact I soon intent to remedy." He enjoyed the last sentence, Hoggle saw it in the way the words danced in his widening Irises. Sarah's eyes were closed, so she did not see, but Hoggle did.

"Sarah, leave now, love, go back to the castle and rest." His eyes fixed Hoggle's own sharply.

"It doesn't matter," her words tore at the air as she struggled to her feet dagger still in hand.

"What?" growled Jareth, quickly reassessing the danger that Sarah might prove to the delicate balance of the whole situation.

"T-toby," her lungs threatened to collapse with the name, but she stood up straighter and looked him in the eye, "may be dead, and so Ludo and Sir Didymus but Hoggle does not have to die. If I die it will end it all, won't it."

Quickly, and without remorse Jareth sped behind her and pressed a lean finger to a hidden crevice in her neck. Dots swam across Sarah's vision but still she struggled. "No, Jareth, stop! Please, you have no power over…" the last words trailed off unsaid and Jareth sighed in release, placed a small kiss on her foreword and lay her down in the middle of the clearing.

"It is a shame that you said the words the first time, or this might not have had to been so messy," he whispered to no one in particular.

Hoggle, stiffened. He would not run. Anyways, in Sarah and Jareth's struggle the dagger had loosed and fallen to the ground and he had picked it up. And while he knew that just because Jareth couldn't use magic on Sarah it didn't mean that he was invulnerable to the man's tricks, he still liked the feeling of the tricky iron in his calloused hands.

"I wanted to kill you from the beginning you know," Jareth began conversationally, almost politely as if this vindicated the act he was about to commit.

"W-what?" Hoggle squeaked, his hands, and therefore the dagger trembling.

Jareth laughed, a loud, sharp out of tune laugh that he had hidden from Sarah a long time ago, but though chilling felt right coming from his lips. "Thirteen hours and she kissed a scab instead of me, it was embarrassing really. But we remedied that didn't we?" There was a pause and Jareth's expression was marred by an upside-down smirk. "Say yes, Hoggle."

Hoggle's, lips moved contrary to his wishes. "Of course my liege."

"Of course, but I find that it wasn't enough. After she came well of course I had to release you. She is a forgiving spirit I find, as long as I showed remorse, false of course. You should feel honored Hoggle, I have only lied to her twice, both times concerning you and your kind." Every other word there was a flash of teeth, a reminder. Hoggle was going to die here.

"B-but she found out about the first time." Hoggle stammered, backing up into one of the large chestnuts.

"And she forgave me, but I think if she knew the truth this time she would be less considerate. It's such a pity really, I didn't want to kill the goblins, or her brother, in some way I cared for them I suppose, but really," he titled is head, and then a ghost of a smile, "I could not lose her."

Then with a single flicker of his wrist Jareth watched as Hoggle's own dagger turned on himself, the purple blood pouring slowly, not gushing. Hoggles eyes were wide and fading to a blank black.

Then almost gently, if anything the Goblin King ever did could be considered gentle he said, "You did the right thing Hoggle, Sarah would be proud, sacrificing yourself. You will have heroes burial. "

And Sarah eyes fluttered open, just as those words echoed into the clearing, but then there was only the cradling of leather encased hands and the beginnings of tears.

"Ah love, forgiveness is your fairest virtue," and kissed her until her lips breathed only sleeps sighs.


	7. Three Kisses: Romance Spiritual

Three Kisses

The First Kiss

The first kiss was not soft. It was peeled and acidic. Ouch. It burnt my lips and my tongue tore back. I turned my head and he growled frustrating, tearing me back to him like Velcro in reverse. "What was that?" More hesitant than spring's first bloom, fingers caged wounded lips.

"What?" Cock of his head, his fingers spliced my own away from my lips and drew close.

I damned up my protests and wait. Just a little pain for pleasure, it must always be like that.

Lips met again, a little bit of spark left a little bit of scar. Don't let anyone make you forget.

- - - - -

The Second Kiss

It is midnight, he is asleep. Rolling over I punch him lightly in the arm and he stirs. I reel myself towards him and mold our contours together, a little bit of imperfect geometry. Until all of our invisible gazes are done and are joints touch in all the right places I wait. He mumbles like a bird of paradise lost in an un-eden, until my lips meet his.

"Mmm, Sarah love…" He has not left his dreams.

For a moment I think I have not left mine either but then a little bit of pain, a little shock widens the eyes and tickles the toes. I am alive, my hand vines around his limp arms until my whole body is shaking from unreleased electricity.

The next morning I am exhausted and he does not understand. Don't let yourself forget that no two people can ever full have that. Understanding.

-------

The Third Kiss

I wrinkle like a book in water. He does not. Where time has rubbed against me there are tiny lacerations, cuts. Blood is as unfamiliar to him as gentleness. Friction has roughened me and he doesn't understand. He touches me, kissed me the same way he always did. But things are not the same.

There is no pain, only endless soft pleasure, folds of it softening my insides until I flow across our bedroom and back again. Until I am as transient as a tide. He does not notice.

"What has changed?" One day new courage encourages me to ask.

He says nothing has, but I know, he is changing something.

I do not have a mirror, I only know I am aging by the difference in my skin against his, the added friction. I do not go out anymore, stay in the castle or the gardens, catching stray sunsets and chatting up unicorns.

One day though I look, in the reflection on the pool and I see.

My lips are thin and worn, like the edges of a bruised table. I have been scarred, tiny permanently unhealed burns. My ugliness is ridiculous. I laugh.

Then I find him, embrace him by surprise and relish the electric taste of his lips against mine.

"I cannot feel pleasure without the pain."

I die the next day, and all of nature sings my requiem, but strangely he is silent. His lips chaste and wistful.

Don't let yourself forget that all is a part of love, even pain and disconnection.

I smile, in the trees, in the brooks and sunsets, and they are all scarred and small for a moment, but brave very brave.

All the world is electric for our last kiss.


	8. Sensory Adaptation: Pure Angst

When he took me away from my family I cried. It was as if there were little cracks inside of me, like I was worn worn leather and every time I moved, every time I _breathed_ I remembered. We would be sitting a the table and a goblin would walk near us, and maybe he would say something that Toby used to say, a phrase like 'gotcha' or 'stupid-face'. Or Jareth would remind me of my father's intellectualism or another maid would make me recall Karen's fastidiousness.

Jareth hadn't annihilated my old life, for as foreign as he was my brain was still determined to see parts of what I missed in him. And he didn't care.

I remember one night we were talking over dinner.

I was harpooning a piece of pork, swirling it in the buttery sauce with unnamed vegetables.

"Sarah," he said, smiling, "must you always do that thing with your fork. I promise the pork isn't going run away."

I smirked, "I've gotten better, remember."

"No doubt, but you've still a long way to go."

He returned to his food, but I did not, staring at the place where his eyes had been. "But where is this all going I wonder?" I asked. I meant it in jest but it just came out sad.

He turned away; saying simply, "Don't provoke me."

Tears pricked at my eyes, but I spit it out, "I am not here to serve your whim Jareth."

"But you are Sarah," he sneered his eyes glittering like stones at the bottom of deep pool laden with moonlight.

"Then how shall I assist you your Majesty. Let me go put on my uniform, let me make your bed. Do not talk with me, do not dine with me, it wouldn't be proper for a lowly servant." I stood up, and his brow crinkled, as if he was tired of my hysterics. I would make him tired, I would make him exhausted!

"Do not try to pretend that you love me." I shouted, trying to turn away from him.

He grabbed my arm then his face dangerously close to mine, his smell just as sweet as always. My body cried out for release, but I was done listening.

His tongue and teeth devoured the words he spoke. "Sarah I love you, you have little say in the matter."

"Open your eyes," I yelled, and he flinched, his hand covering my mouth. I squirmed, but finally relented into his embrace, as I always did.

"Sarah, I think it's time for bed."

"Of course," a numb elegance encased my words, froze me in time, in this moment away from everything I had loved. "But Jareth I am so lonely." Honesty was my only weapon.

"Why, love? I am right here." And he was, his face buried in my hair, lips playing at the sensitivity located underneath my skin. I shivered and arched into his embrace. But I did not laugh or smile.

"I need to go home Jareth, please. I need a way to laugh and smile; I need friends. I need someone who asks me when I come home, how I'm doing. Someone who respects the fact that I don't want to be touched—"

"But you do." To prove it he slunk further against me, and I shivered again. "You are far from puritanical love, don't try and pretend otherwise."

"Do you know, Jareth, how ashamed of myself I felt after our first night? Can you have any idea how worthless I felt?"

"No," he relented taking away his sweet warmth, and I yearned for it just the same. He was hurt, so very hurt in his eyes.

"I'm so sorry Jareth," and I was, "but you need to know, that physically I may be ready, but mentally I'm not."

"Then we'll wait," he said firmly.

"But it's more than that. I miss the respect, people caring about my opinion, being aware and sophisticated, and having prospects." I sighed. "I can't be myself if the only thing I am to you is _yours."_

"We should talk about this another time."

"No, we should talk about this now. Jareth, I need to go home."

"That is not an option."

"Please."

"No."

"Jareth one day I will find someone in this world who can give me these things and he will not be you."


	9. This is Life: Bittersweet Romance

He came to her on a night clear as glass, but equally distorted. She hadn't been expecting him, but when he did show up she wasn't surprised. Somehow she had trained herself to believe in only impossible things. The T.V fuzzed in and out but Sarah couldn't bring herself to turn it off entirely, the lights flickered as well. She didn't turn around. "Hello."

"Sarah, you are alone?" His voice was trying so hard to be kind it hurt. All the sharp angles of years inhumanity poked through his poor costume.

"I have always been alone," she said quietly staring at the static.

"You know nothing of forever." He said bitterly, but also soothingly, as if he actually thought his smugness would make her feel better.

Her hand stiffened on the armchair, and the remote wobbled on her other hand. "I knew that you always were cruel to me, but to yourself. Why I think you are rather good at what you do."

"And what is that Sarah, what do you think I do?" He said harshly, all attempts at placidity gone. He had snuck up behind her until his chin was centimeters above the edge of the couch and away from her neck. His breath felt unnaturally fresh and springlike.

"You steal children and then punish the wishers when they fail. You are a sadist, the devil." Her voice began to shake and the little earthquakes were almost too much. She could feel fissures of tears cracking at her eyelashes.

His nose brushed up against the curve of her neck. She shivered feeling a wicked slalom of pleasure hurtle down her spine. "What if I offered to show you young Toby?"

"I need only to look at you to see ugliness and my past mistakes in goblin form, Jareth." When she had used his title it had been raw and bitter, but distanced somehow as if he were still not completely real or responsible for his actions. The Goblin King was to her a storm, or an avalanche, you couldn't blame nature for killing and ripping things apart. Jareth, Jareth was sensual, and delicious and very very responsible for his actions.

"He is not a Goblin Sarah." This time the gentleness was very real.

"You never lie." She turned around, and accidentally there eyes met and their lips met and their noses just almost brushed. But it was like a breeze so fleeting that if not for the intensity she would have forgot it had ever happened.

"Yes, Sarah he is not a Goblin," a laugh bubbled in him like magma or sulfer, "he is the prince of them."

"I didn't give in," she whispered, "I didn't say yes so why did I lose. And if I did lose then why isn't he a goblin. There is no metaphor it doesn't fit." Her lips were becoming frantic and twisted in their mumblings.

He frowned, "Life is not a story Sarah."

"I'm not asking for a happily ever after." She stood up straighter her eyes glinting defiantly.

"I wouldn't shame you by offering one. Did you ever think that the test would be longer?" He walked away from the couch and she caught herself before she leaned after him into the smell of false newness.

"What?"

"A labyrinth of self-discovery is mighty convienent. In stories when authors don't have time to drag out self-discovery the use it for quick fixes but I think you've learned your lesson." He was talking to himself now, pacing, looking almost nervous.

"Yes I have," she offered timidly, beginning to climb over the couch.

"Good," he said fiercely, and strode over to her. She expected to be kissed thoroughly, or punched, or maybe dissapatted into thin air. He did all at once.

He kissed her and she felt herself shimmer and there was a punching feeling in her gut of being more than two places at once. She didn't understand this, and she always understood the things that no one else understood, stories. But then again this was life, not a story.


	10. To Serve: Angry Romance

She was the first one to reach the castle, but she still didn't win. They never won. He was just too good at the game, had an eternity to learn about mortality and all of its flaws. And he chose to needle them in. It was disgusting, but it was also easy to think that he was just too good. Maybe, just maybe, she was just too bad. But it wasn't too bad it was inexcusable.

She stared out at the glass reflection pond, the skimming spiders like gravel burnished by twilight. The grass whispered against her ankles and for once she did not dip her toes until the warm numbing water. She had stopped drinking it long ago. In the distance the beginnings of a 13th of the moon sharpened into view behind pulpy clouds.

She smoothed her pants, the pair of blue jeans she had worn when she had wished herself away to him. Intentions of destruction were too volatile and her jeans were ripped in all the places to exemplify this. Her shirt was flowy and of this world unlike the jeans.

"Hello Sarah," his voice was serrated with that constant cruelty. She thought it would dull against her brain but it never did. Maybe she was his sharpener.

Her toe yearned towards the pool, twisting and flexing. "No," she said reluctantly.

He strode towards her from between the once-weeped willows, who now stood straight and strong. "You don't sound as sure as usual."

"I am tired of this game Jareth, you have to let me go." She turned around to look for him to plead with him even, but he was not there. Was this really over so quickly.

She felt the tickling of velvet against her neck. He was touching her, really touching her. His hand moved against the grain and she leaned into his touch. She did not feel guilty for wanting him. Her lips moistened, and her neck uncrooked into an almost architectural line.

His finger lifted off her skin and was not replaced by lips. "I will not make love to you again Sarah."

"Such a pity." She barely restrained herself from giggling madly, but it became easy once his pendent gleamed in the light. "You know," she says thoughtfully her voice smoothing with the swinging of the pendent, "I could just end it right now."

"I know," he said gravely, and then added forcefully but quietly, "do it then."

"I don't want to delete you Jareth, I love you." She approached him and her hand trailed to his pendant. His eyes hardened and he stared straight ahead. Her fingers traced the edge straying away from the small jewels inlayed farther inward. She felt him stiffen and his breathing accelerate. She leaned in and it was her that pressed the first kiss to a neck like a pillar of alabaster.

"I cannot accept your fate Jareth, to steal children. You stole my child." Her teeth sunk into his skin farther than they had ever before, but there still was no blood.

He opened his mouth and decided against commenting on technicalities, instead leaning into her touch no matter how harsh. She smoothed out the two red dots from her dull canines with quick almost platonic kisses. "I have come back to your kingdom Goblin King to take back that which you have stolen. You have no power over me." The words were so jumbled in-between kisses and the slickness of them that he didn't hear them.

Nothing happened. He smiled and it almost wasn't sad. "Unlike you Sarah, I have accepted my fate."

Her arms encircled him fiercely until she could smell the coolness upon him. The clothing ripped almost as prettily as it hung, she noticed, as her fingers pried out glitter and silk away from his icey skin. "What," her fingers trailed down to his stomach and then halted at his waistband, "is my fate."

"To serve me." He said plainly, though there was an almost growl buried in his throat.

"Oh your majesty?" Her fingers tangled themselves in his hair until she had singed every strand with the burning on her fingertips. His ear quivered as she breathed into it, so slowly, eeking up onto him until she spoke. "And how are you enjoying your service Jareth."

Her turned upon her and cupped her face in his hands. She struggled valiantly, but finally succumbed to his embrace. "Fate is as hard for me as you Sarah, but at least I recognize it. Love me, fear me, rule by my side." He snarled into her lips which had now twisted into his. "Or do it from my feet."

She let out a whimper at the rough coldness of his lips. Sometime later she emerged for a breath. He bit his lip and smiled, but it was not any smile she had ever seen from him before, it was sad and real. He laughed shortly and pushed her down onto the ground. "I care not."

The air shimmered three times, from red, to purple to pearl. A child had been wished away. "Go," she said, " the games begin a gain."

"Sarah always remember I do not care where you serve me."

And for then the unspoken message that he cared deeply that she did at all was enough to stem her hatred at Jareth. The Goblin King, well he would be her nemesis for eternity, it was fate.


	11. The Price of Victory: Angst

She was lonely, that was the answer to all of her questions, and quite often the questions her pre-conceived answers yearned to accept. She had, in many ways, always been lonely, even when she was with her friends. She felt, tangled and cold.

Especially now, the day of her wedding, she felt it. She was in the English Gardens, hiding, from him Brandon. Or as her mother, not her real mother of course, but Karen would have it, mentally preparing.

There were no thoughts to string together, nothing to prepare because it seemed, as it often did, that anything she felt up here, was painfully irrelevant. And yet, she surrounded herself with beauty, and love that she couldn't seem to appreciate.

Though it was a warm, even hot, summers day with only a whisper of a breeze she felt cold. Lace haunted her waist, her neckline bowed and dipped to fashion; she knew she was beautiful the same way the fish knows it is wet. Her long tapered fingers ran lightly over a small letter, made of a thick creamy paper, rich like a sauce or chocolate.

She knew that she was lonely before all else, it was in some solemn sense her duty, but this paper, the words printed on it, freed her a little. Her chin was tilted at an angel of pride though, not of love, and her gaze ripped at the confines of the cove, anxious.

Like a song she only half-knew the words to, like a false kiss, like a poisoned dream she heard the words, whispered through her. It began with a name, as if His letter wouldn't arrive in the right hands anyways. His thoughts were always bolted to her, nailed to her, even when uttered through the eclectic fabric of time.

The roses whispered it, the beginning, like the falling and rising of the moon, the death of one wave to the glory of another. Her name lived in elapsed time.

_Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. _

The roses, though many hued, did not know diversity of speech, and each time they whispered it in the soft rustles of their dew-forlorn petals it was if they were stuck in the same moment for eternity. Knowing beauty's vanity Sarah was sure that they would wish that very fate.

The tiny sprinklers spoke next. They were shrunken and withered steel rusting with age, drizzling out tiny bits of water in diminutive spirals. But they managed to creak out the beginnings of his words in her head with all the elegance of a waltz.

_We have played our games well; I must admit you have been a worthy opponent. However, in the end I after all do have no power over you. Such a pity isn't it, it would be so much easier if I could take you, don't you think. There would be no blame, no anguish, no loneliness. _

The sprinklers stopped suddenly with their previously steady shushing, spluttering instead of gasping for their last breaths. Sarah's eyes, like an unsteady candle flame, flickered. It was not that she could feel the wind changing from breeze to a taunt, though she could, but that she knew the words that would come next. The trees were not whispering after all, just her mind, she reasoned, yearning to speak through something less tangled and small. Her lips did not fit well around his words.

It was the stones that continued with it, his letter to her. They did not speak but merely bended their soft vibrations a little, the slow humming that only those that listen can here. And Sarah reasoned, it was impossible not to listen to your own voice, even mutated by mortar.

_Sarah, though I love you, I understand that for you it is inconsequential. You cannot love as you are now, mortal. Love is only as great, or weak as the body that bears it. I will not even mention the boy; he understands how worthless he is. He worships you, as he should, but he does not love you. Which is why, perhaps you cannot love him. _

The stones are as cold as him, as cold as both of them. It fits, she agrees, his reasoning fits. But fear the color of water, stealthy and tricky grasps her, and something else, something even stronger, something she doesn't think she can give up even for love, prods the fear foreword.

_You have thought you are a monster for a while now, inhuman because you cannot keep a constant love in your heart. I will not lie to you, you are. You are monstrous as I am, as cruel, we are evenly matched you and I. _

At first she thought that the stones had stopped, but the pause was too short, and then they began again with the same conviction, unwavering.

_But I must give you a choice; _

The stones were joined by the grasses, gossipy and crackled.

_live out your life in loneliness, _

The grasses were joined by the trees, firm and melancholy.

_completely free,_

The trees were joined by the sprinklers, who sprayed the words, who fountained the phrases.

_or give yourself completely to me, be bound, and understand what you have always missed._

Sarah joined in reciting the words along with all of creation that seemed content to bend for her, this once.

Then, quite but painfully, like a dawn breaking, a deer dying, a smile falling, the rose bed rippled, and all fell silent. Quickly she checked her watch but it had stopped, he had promised, at their last meeting that he would not re-order time for her again. A smile cracked her lips that did not mean of course, that he wouldn't stop it.

But the smile was as fleeting as the day, as her heart's passions, and faded like an unworthy myth.

"And, change for me, become as I am, give up your mortality."

It was him, of course. He had sent her signs, warnings, directions, and yet she still felt the accelerated beating of her heart.

He was dressed in black as surely as she was dressed in white, his air normally as wild as a forest was tamed neatly by a bolt of black velvet, though his eyebrows were still upswept into snowy peaks and his eyes refused to match each other. He smiled a locked smile to which no one had the key.

"I suppose I can't take it to mean that your white dress signals surrender."

She bit her lip and turned away from him, listening pensively to the sound of her own heartbeat syncopated by the quite accommodations of the stones to his footsteps as he glided to her. "No," she said, but her body did not agree with her mind, and her heart was entirely absent from the word all together.

Hands slithered around her waist and his lips—so cold, touched the small valley between her neck and her shouldered, she shivered. "I see," he whispered against the dainty, almost invisible hairs on her neck. Then slowly, he withdrew his face calm but with the same disturbance underneath that it always had.

She wrapped her arms around her, cradling her shoulder blades with desperate palms. "I can't don't you see, I just can't."

"I have seen Sarah. How do you think I became as I am. I was once like you, but I fought for my magic." It amazed Sarah how quickly the past flickered through his eyes, like a quote, not a memory, like a word.

She shook her head stepping to the path that led down to the Japanese Gardens, to Brandon. "I will not admit that I am weak, that I am flawed so deeply that I must change myself just," her throat caught, hooked on the edges of the consonants, "to be loved.

"Are you denying love all for pride Sarah?" There was no fury in his tone, just amazement, and a deep echoing puzzlement that seemed to resonate in the words, not cause them.

"I have not denied anything yet."

"But you are going to aren't you. You're last effort was going to be to try to convince me to become mortal, wasn't it." Without moving he was in front of her, a thumb to her cheek searching for a tear. He smiled when he didn't find one.

"N-no," she stammered out, trying to turn away, he was blinding her.

Then he laughed, a laugh made out of sharps and flats, and things discarded or used sparingly. It clanged metallic in the cushioned air of summer and assumed happiness. "You can't even cry, you're mortal body is so disconnected you cannot even care, you want to, don't you. You can feel it welling up inside you, stirring but," he withdrew his thumb and smoothed her hair out with his hand, and she leaned into him her body trembling like a broken limb, "you cannot."

"Will it hurt?" she asked quietly, locked like a smile or a blackmail even though it was her choice, she rationalized.

"Contrary to many mortals opinions all dying hurts, but I will be here, if that is any consolation."

"Don't say it like that," she whispered, though her shaking had stopped and a familiar sting tinged the edges of her thoughts. "Dying is the end, this is the beginning, isn't it?"

"Do not delude yourself," he said harshly, almost angry, even though he was never angry, only placid, always placid, "Sarah Williams will die here today, it is necessary for the Goblin Queen to be born."

"Then I will not. I cannot change myself for you, or for the world Jareth." She said firmly, tearing away from his embrace like lips from an icicle, she could feel the missing bits she left with him, the tiny beads of blood.

"You would remain yourself here, worshipped, but not loved, always alone, even while in company. Out of fear, out of pride," his eyes widened and something like pain shadowed his brow. Maybe she wasn't the only one who had lost a bit of herself.

"Yes."

"So be it."

Then, and many times later, when Sarah was laughing but empty, crying but worshipped, adored, she wondered if there had ever really been a choice. She had fought for her misery and brief, but lovely happinesses.

And had won.


End file.
